


Time to Leave Home

by teenage_hustler



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Dark Magic, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14600424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenage_hustler/pseuds/teenage_hustler
Summary: Draco has been in love with Hermione for years, and now that Weasley is out of the picture, he finally has the chance to ask her out. The only problem with that is, to go out with her he would have to leave his house.This was originally written for the 2014 Dramione Duet. This was a pretty intense fic to write. Magical houses are a bit of a trope of mine, it seems, and in this fic the house is being a proper bastard to Draco, making him remember the history of violence that went on in it when he was a child. The descriptions are not too graphic, but that content is there. You have been warned, dear readers.





	Time to Leave Home

Attempt 1: The Café

_Okay_ , Draco thought. _This is it. I can do this._

Nervous and girding his loins though he currently was, he had to admit that he had met with several strokes of incredibly good luck up until this point. First of all, he had managed to keep his infatuation with Hermione Granger completely secret for almost a decade, with nobody being any the wiser. 

Granted, Draco knew how to keep a secret. He had a theory that all Pureblood children are taught the art of secret-keeping as a compulsory part of the Pre-Hogwarts curriculum. There was no such thing as a Pre-Hogwarts curriculum to his knowledge, but considering how he, Pansy, Blaise, Vince, Greg, and all of the other Slytherin Purebloods he had known over the years seemed to have been taught exactly the same, generally sinister, stuff, Draco had to assume that there was some sort of grand tome, titled something along the lines of “A Guide to Teaching Your Small Children How to be as Arrogant and Self-Centred as You”, which was passed down the Pureblood line immediately after the birth of a new child. 

Despite this, withholding such important and vulnerable information as this for so long was impressive, even among Purebloods. There had been a couple of close shaves, like the time when Blaise had dared Draco to drink half a bottle of Firewhiskey and then immediately afterward insisted he share the biggest secret he held with _everybody_ in the Slytherin common room. Luckily, that was during his seventh year, so he was able to tell everybody that his parents were both shit scared for their lives right now without the sincerity of his confession being brought to question. More recently, the main contributing factor to his secret-keeping was the fact that he did not see much of those confidants any more.

The second stroke of good luck came in the name of Weasley stupidity. Draco could not begin to fathom what goes on in the head of someone so dim at the best of times, but it took a special brand of idiocy to believe that one could do better than Hermione Granger. It wasn’t like that was a one-off situation either, because he was also stupid enough to announce to the media some two months ago that he and Granger were breaking up. The press still were not over it. Weasley had since moved to Ireland, started boning some fair maiden there, and appeared for all accounts to be blissfully happy.

It made Draco wonder how long it would take for Weasley to realise how stupid a thing he’d done and come crawling back to her. It would take most people less than a month, so with Weasley it would probably be a good three or four. Still, Draco figured that it would be better to play it safe – if Weasley stumbled upon some Make-Me-Not-A-Dunderhead Potion and managed to work out from what end of the bottle to drink, Draco could be cutting it a little fine.

The third, and most immediate, stroke of good luck was his being at The Phoenix and Serpent that afternoon. The quaint little coffee shop had recently become one of his favourite haunts. Admittedly, this was mainly because their iced vanilla lattes were to die for, but he also enjoyed the light airiness of the place that was the polar opposite of the Manor; where he spent most of his time. He tried to visit The Phoenix and Serpent once every couple of days and soak up the atmosphere, although lately he had been finding it difficult to spare the hour or two required for this.

And this afternoon, by fortune of good fortunes, Hermione Granger was also there.

He took a moment to admire her. She was dressed in a periwinkle blue blouse, similar in colour to the dress robes she wore at the Yule Ball; the fateful night when his initial crush began. Accompanying the blouse were a black pencil skirt, sheer tights and low black heels. The outfit was professional, understated, and suited her no-fuss attitude towards clothing to a tee. She wore one necklace; a silver, rose-shaped pendant on a simple chain. Her hair was its usual brown mass of bushy curls, and she had somehow managed to gather them all up and tie them into a bundle on the back of her head with a thin hair bobble that Draco was not entirely confident could take the strain indefinitely.

In short, she looked perfect. And as it had been two months since Weasley had left the picture, Draco felt that now was the perfect time to finally, _finally_ , ask her out.

He approached the small table at which she sat, adopting the trademark Malfoy swagger as he went.

“Afternoon, Granger,” he greeted her.

Hermione looked up and smiled warmly at him, exposing the top row of her pearly white, slightly crooked teeth, and making Draco’s heart melt just a little more. By Merlin, he was whipped. “Malfoy! Hello! What brings you to The Phoenix and Serpent?”

“I’m a regular, I guess you could say. I like to come here whenever I can. I find their iced vanilla lattes particularly delicious.”

“They are really good, definitely. Personally, I love their hazelnut hot chocolates most. They remind me of when I was little and my mum would make me hot chocolates with Nutella.”

“What is Nutella?”

“It’s a spread, made from cocoa, milk and hazelnuts. It’s great to spread on bread, or to flavour cakes.”

“It sounds nice.”

“It’s heavenly.” Hermione granted him another smile, and Draco wondered briefly what he had been so worried about. They got along very well these days. He supposed that was not surprising, given their history.

“So, is there anything you wanted to talk about?” Hermione continued to smile at him, but the expression in her eyes changed. Now there was a twinge of concern. “Is something the matter? Did you want to schedule a meeting?”

“No, no. I’m fine,” Draco said, doing a quick last-minute loin-gird before pushing on. “However, I was wondering if, sometime soon, you would like to—“

“Did I miss anything?”

Upon hearing the unfamiliar, warm baritone voice, Draco’s heart immediately sank. He turned to see a tall, dark-haired gentleman around his age holding two coffee mugs and edging past him to sit opposite Hermione.

“I was just catching up with a friend,” Hermione said, taking the tall stranger’s hand in hers. Draco’s heart sank just a little bit more. “Draco, this is Steve. He’s just joined my office and kindly offered to take me here for a drink. Steve, this is Draco.”

“No need for the introduction, I can assure you,” Steve said cheerfully, extending a hand that Draco shook obligingly. “Your reputation precedes you.”

Draco managed a smile, and he was fairly confident that it was a smile reasonably devoid of jealousy. “All good, I trust?”

“Of course. Becoming an Auror after what you have been through is truly noteworthy.”

This gentleman was easy-going, charming, and genuinely seemed like one of the nicest people in the world. Therefore, Draco had to hate him. That was just how these things worked.

“I am afraid you’ll have to pardon me. I must finish some last-minute work at home,” he said, backing away. “Nice chatting to you, Granger.”

“See you soon, Malfoy!”

Draco spent the next hour trying, and failing, to read incredibly boring documents about some bloke who got caught doing Transfiguration by a Muggle speed camera. He dearly wished there were a punching bag in any of the Manor’s more spacious rooms. He eventually gave up the struggle and spent some time wandering around, trying to decide which room would be ideal for a punching bag to be installed.

~*~

Attempt 2: Her Office

A month passed, and although Draco had seen Hermione several times, there was no further mention of the charming, good-as-gold, horrible son-of-a-bitch Steve. Foolish though it may be, he started to wonder if maybe he had read the signals incorrectly and Hermione was still available.

He entered her office at 3 PM on the dot, wondering if he should have donned the hair gel this morning after all. He had grown out of the habit of using it, but sometimes he found that it helped him to bring back the Malfoy confidence he had had in droves for most of his childhood. He figured he was really going to need it today.

Hermione looked up from the file on which she was working and grinned at him.

“Hello, Malfoy,” she said warmly.

“Hello, Granger,” he responded, taking a seat opposite her. 

Hermione scribbled something on the file, Banished it and several others away with a flick of her wand, and pulled a well-worn folder toward her. Draco knew the folder well. It had been their point of reference for some time now.

“Well, first thing’s first, I suppose,” she began, opening the file. “How’s your mother?”

“Quite well, actually. I think the new house suits her better. Malfoy Manor holds too many terrible memories for her.”

Hermione nodded. “Quite understandable. Your mother is a remarkably able woman, but I do not think even the most strong-willed of us would fare well continuing to live in the same house after what she went through.”

“Precisely.”

Hermione looked up. “And you still believe that your living there is a good idea?”

“Yes.”

At that, Hermione graced him with her first real frown of the encounter and removed her reading glasses thoughtfully. “Draco,” she said, the use of his first name gaining her his full attention, “I can understand why you would want to continue living in your family home. However, I don’t think you have thought, fully and completely, about it.”

“I know that it’s safe there now.”

“I’m not saying that it isn’t, or that you don’t know it. But, Draco…” she trailed off, allowing herself a few moments to collect her thoughts. “You went through severely traumatic experiences there. These experiences continued well after Voldemort’s demise and did not stop until we were able to find concrete evidence of them happening and bring your father to justice.”

“I know, Granger. I was there.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to belittle you, I promise.” She paused again, fiddling with the rim of her glasses. “Obviously, I cannot give a qualified opinion about this, but since your father’s arrest, you have not lived away from the Manor. And with your mother doing so well living somewhere else, I can’t help but wonder if you would benefit from doing something similar.”

“I don’t believe so,” Draco said. “For starters, Mother was struggling to move on whilst living in the Manor. That is why she moved out. But I have moved on. I’m fine.”

Hermione frowned at him again. “Draco, while I don’t want you to think that I don’t believe you, I’ve also noticed that your lifestyle is not exactly … varied.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, as far as I can tell you are either at work, in my office for these meetings, or at the Manor. I know you have friends, but I have never seen you go out with them. I also know you talk to your mother, but I suspect you don’t actually leave the house to visit her. To tell you the truth, seeing you at The Phoenix and Serpent last month was surprising for me. I had previously thought you did not go outside at all.”

It was Draco’s turn to frown. “I admit my lifestyle is not the most exciting, but a lot of people live that way, including many who were not abused and tortured by their father, his boss, and his fellow merry men, for three years.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed at Draco’s mentioning of his father’s actions, but chose not to bring it up. There was not really anything to say about it that had not been said already. She instead stuck with the topic at hand. “Certainly there are. But those people prefer their own company. From what I remember at Hogwarts, you were always out and about, and you were always with other people.”

“So, are you saying that I should spend more time with other people?”

Hermione brushed a stray curl behind her ear; a nervous habit of hers he had noticed some time ago. “Again, my opinion is hardly professional, but I think it would be really helpful for you.”

At that, Draco straightened. “In that case, Granger, I was wondering if you might—“

Hermione’s wand started buzzing, much to Draco’s frustration. She offered him an apologetic smile and waved it at an adjacent blank wall.

“Yes, Charlotte?” She addressed the projected image of her secretary.

“Sorry to interrupt, Miss Granger. It’s just that Ricky’s on the Floo for you.”

“Oh right! Well, tell him I’ll call him back in about fifteen minutes.”

“No problem.” Charlotte winked at Hermione, who waved the image away and turned back to Draco, her cheeks slightly flushed.

“Sorry, where were we?” she asked.

Draco was so very tempted to ask who in Merlin’s name Ricky was, but decided against it. Mainly because he knew he would not be able to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“I was wondering,” he said instead, “if you have some recommendations for nice places to go for drinks? I might arrange an outing with some of my old friends, and I’m getting pretty sick of the Leaky Cauldron.”

Hermione readily launched into a monologue about her favourite pubs in Muggle London, and Draco was left to privately stew.

~*~

Attempt 3: Malfoy Manor

Draco did not end up contacting his friends. They contacted him by Floo and invited him out a couple of times, but Draco always had something that needed doing. He would then disconnect the Floo and do some paperwork, but only after spending several hours wandering around the Manor, room by room, thinking about what happened in each room as he entered it.

It was something he did pretty much every day, but he hadn’t noticed until the meeting with Hermione three months ago.

He therefore decided to stop doing it. Every evening when he got home from work, he would sit down, eat dinner, go into the living room with a nightcap and book for a few hours, then head up to his bedroom.

But then, he would think of something that needed doing in one of the other rooms. _The chandeliers in the ballroom should be checked to see if they’re clean_ , was what he thought the first time. 

So he went to the ballroom, glanced briefly up at the chandeliers, then looked towards the floor, where he distinctly remembers being forced to lie on his stomach while his father and one of his mates lashed him with a belt once. 

Then he thought that the books in the library needed dusting. So he went to the library, considered the dusty volumes for a brief moment, then looked at the ladder between the bookshelves. The space between the fifth and sixth rungs of that ladder had once contained his mother’s head, and he had been made to watch her be moved, manhandled, and finally violently penetrated by at least three Death Eaters, all of whom had had his father’s permission. 

Then, he thought there might be some pots that need washing in the kitchen, and so the cycle would continue until he had been to every room in the house, reliving memories he’d rather forget. The memories were horrific, of course. But Draco had always believed that he had dealt with them. He still thought about them, but the thought of them no longer made him angry, or scared, or sad. He felt nothing.

One night a few weeks ago he realised that he was still visiting every room in his house, and as soon as he was finished with his evening snifter, he bolted upstairs, straight to his bedroom, and closed the door. He felt weirdly triumphant. He did not understand how he had developed this compulsion, but breaking the cycle was surely the best way to break the habit.

He did not sleep that night.

His brain refused to quiet down. The same memories that would come to him when he visited the rooms came to him again, but all at once. He saw his mother being tortured, the view from the dungeons he was hung from countless times, the laughing faces of the Death Eaters, his father’s impassive posture as he exited a room, carefully removing blood from his hands with his embroidered handkerchief.

The anger, fear and sadness came rushing back. And in Draco’s opinion, they were entirely unwelcome.

He managed to go to work for about a week after that. But soon the lack of sleep caught up with him and he applied for extended leave. He thought that maybe it was like recovering from an addiction, where at first it is beyond awful but eventually the pain fades until it goes altogether.

But it did not seem to be like that. Every night, the memories were as vivid and plentiful as ever, and during the day, they continued to run through his mind like a dumb, heavy animal that weighed him down but could not be shifted no matter what he tried. 

Several times he considered leaving the manor. Going to The Phoenix and Serpent for an iced vanilla latte, perhaps? But as soon as he stepped into the Floo, he found himself pulling his foot straight back out again. One day he tried to leave the Manor for over an hour, and he could not do it.

He was trapped.

He was lying on a couch in the living room one evening when the Floo sprang to life. Glancing up, he saw Hermione’s concerned face.

Interestingly, concern was unable to make her look any less perfect.

“Malfoy? Oh dear Merlin, what’s happened to you?”

With Herculean effort, Draco managed to sit upright.

“Granger, I think you’re right. I need to leave this house, but I can’t. Not by myself. Can you help me?”

The concern on Hermione’s face softened into kindness and warmth. It was the same face she had on when she and her Auror friends found him here, five years ago. It was the face that turned the crush he had held for years into something more.

“Of course I can. I just need to tell Lewis where I’m going, and I’ll be right there.”

_Lewis_? The name did not ring a bell, but it made Draco’s stomach twist in a way that was not akin to anger, sadness or fear. In a way, it was sort of welcome.

When Hermione rushed in, helped him up, and brought him over to the Floo, he leaned on her and whispered in her ear, “Will you go out with me?” 

Hermione turned and stared at him, but the Floo swept them away before she could answer.

~*~

Attempt 4: St Mungo’s

Recovery took the better part of a year and and remained slow going.

Once Draco was settled in St Mungo’s and it was established that his life was not in immediate danger, Hermione sent a team of Aurors and curse breakers to check out Malfoy Manor. It turned out that the house had an old Dark Magic curse on it that Hermione had described as “both deeply fascinating and horrifically disturbing”. The curse called any owners of the house to certain areas where significant events (generally bad ones) had happened, and made them relive these events. The curse would do this until the house owners would become addicted to the process and reluctant to leave the house as a result. If the chain was broken, as Draco had managed to do that night when he ran straight to his bedroom, the curse would force all of those horrific memories into the home owners’ brain at once. Depending on the memories, this part of the curse would be anything from mildly annoying to utterly debilitating. In Draco’s case, the pendulum had swung significantly towards the latter.

Once Hermione had taken Draco from the house, he could start to recover from the curse. Because he had been exposed to the curse for a while, it took some time for it to leave his system entirely. As well as that, the psychological effects of reliving those memories so many times over were far too significant to be ignored. Hermione therefore suggested he see a Muggle therapist, with whom the bad memories and the feelings accompanying those memories could be discussed. 

That was the part that Draco was still working on. He wouldn’t be surprised if it took him years to get through it all.

Still, he had to admit it was better than the alternative.

As the curse left him, Draco found himself wanting to do more. He started going out with his friends, just for an hour or so at first, but then for longer periods. Once he started work again, he would sometimes linger after finishing time to chat with the other Aurors. Occasionally this led to a drink at the pub, and Draco started looking forward to these drinks, rather than wishing they were over so he could go home like he had before.

Most interestingly, he started to look back on his bad memories and feel no numbness, or fear, anger or sadness. Instead, he started to feel a weird sense of peace – as though what happened was terrible, but it was indisputably over. He could move forward.

Draco sat on a white, newly clean bed as the examiner waved her wand over him. Hermione came in and grinned at him. 

“I’ve just been off the phone to Steve. He and his wife are going on a cruise.”

“Steve has a wife?” Draco asked. 

“Of course,” Hermione answered. “A catch like that roaming the streets, single? Not in this world.”

“Huh. What about Ricky? Is he married too?”

“Ricky?” Hermione repeated, frowning. “He isn’t, but he’s hoping to eventually find the right man for the job.”

“Man, you say? Good for him.” Draco paused for a moment, considering whether Hermione would smell a rat.

In the end though, he decided those rats just need to be smelled sometimes. “And Lewis? What about him?”

“Cousin Lewis? He’s not married, no. I’m not sure he ever will be. He’s a character, but he’s rather oblivious to the people around him most of the time.”

“Hmm,” Draco said, not even bothering to hide his smile.

Hermione turned back to him, eyes now narrowed with scepticism. “What?”

“I was wondering if you would be free for a drink after the Healer lets me go.”

Hermione did not answer for a moment, seeming to stew it over. Then, her face broke into a grin so magnificent that Draco almost felt as though he had fallen in love again.

“Oh, Draco,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
